Takwic is a balancing spirit. He can appear in human form, or as a ball of fire. One of his resting places is Gregory Mountain — right next to Gregory Canyon, where developers have tried for nearly 20 years to win permission to build a landfill.

You don’t want to get Takwic mad, said Shasta Gaughen, environmental director and Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Pala Band of Mission Indians.

“Takwic gathers souls, so he can come and get you,” she said. “This is from a cultural perspective, which is a fancy way of saying people do still believe this.”

Ever since Gregory Canyon Ltd. announced plans to build a landfill off state Route 76 just west of the Pala reservation, the tribe has been fighting the developer. It has spent millions of dollars since 1993, yet the developer remains close to securing permits from a host of local and state agencies. A final permit from the federal government could be granted next year.

Other opponents include ecological groups and several North County cities that worry about environmental damage the landfill might cause to groundwater and the San Luis Rey River, which runs through the property.

But for Pala tribal members, it’s the cultural aspects — the idea that a mountain they deem sacred would be desecrated by tons of garbage — that has them most upset.

“Allowing the landfill to be built on the flanks of Chokla (one of the mountain’s other names) would be akin to building a trash dump around the walls of a cathedral,” Gaughen told federal officials at a meeting last year.

Gregory Canyon Ltd. officials have been somewhat dismissive of the tribe’s claims. They have implied that the tribe came up with the sacredness element only after the landfill plans were announced.

Gaughen said that’s not true.

“We have written documentation of the sacred nature of the mountain and the surrounding area from anthropologists’ accounts from the 1920s,” she said. “And those accounts were taken from people who were very elderly at the time they gave those accounts.”

Over the years, the developer also has questioned the tribe’s motives, noting that to the east of the mountain sits a large hotel and casino.

Once Nancy Chase, a spokeswoman for the developer, said “Takwic would be appalled if he could look down from the mountain onto the casino,” Gaughen recalled. “I nearly bled tears of rage when I read that because I’m so tired of correcting that misconception. The casino is not on sacred land.”

On its website, Gregory Canyon Ltd. said the county’s environmental report on the proposed landfill includes a detailed analysis of potential impacts on Indian culture and concludes that there are no objectively verifiable impacts.

“There are no physical archaeological resources of significance on the project site or at the top of Gregory Mountain, and no documented use of the top of Gregory Mountain for religious ceremonies for at least the past 70 years,” according to the website. “Gregory Canyon respects the beliefs of Native American peoples, and the project has incorporated a variety of features to protect these cultural resources, even though they are subjective and cannot be verified.”

Gaughen said while there are some grinding stones on the mountain and a rock a few hundred yards from the footprint of the landfill that has pictographs on it, the real importance of Gregory Mountain isn’t something that can be easily quantified.

“Native ways of knowing and navigating the spiritual and sacred often leave no trace on the land,” she said. “Yet the mark they leave on the cultural lives of the people is indelible.”

Gaughen believes that in the end, the environmental concerns have the best chance of halting the landfill project. She said rarely in U.S. history do American Indians’ cultural concerns stop big developments from happening.